Ditch Bill Clinton...

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I've had a remarkable run of successful political bets in the past two
months, winning enough small change to completely wipe out my 2002
heart-over-mind wager that the Boston Red Sox would win the World Series.
Obviously, despite a dormant offseason so far from new Bosox GM Theo
Epstein-the acquisition of Jeremy Giambi, now that'll slay the Curse of the
Bambino-I'll play the sucker once again next spring, with the usual sharpies
taking advantage of my light-headed faith that the Sox will eventually reign
as baseball's champs.

There was the booty from picking Bob Ehrlich over Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend in the Maryland governor's race (although a certain Baltimore Sun
columnist has yet to pay up). A last-minute prediction that the GOP would
win back the Senate yielded another hundred bucks. Al Gore's withdrawal from
the 2004 presidential race helped jam my mailbox with checks. Finally, my
hunch that Bill Frist would replace Trent Lott as majority leader paid for a
couple of PlayStation 2 games for Junior that'll be under the Christmas
tree, Joe Lieberman's disapproval notwithstanding.

In the interest of spreading the wealth, here's a tip for recreational
gamblers that'll pay off about a year from now. The Democratic nomination
will be won by the first candidate who has the guts to repudiate Bill
Clinton and his acolytes like Terry McAuliffe, Paul Begala and James
Carville. Now that's what I'd call a supreme Sister Souljah moment!

Objectively, the independently wealthy John Kerry is in the best
position to eschew the Clinton/McAuliffe fundraising machine in favor of
principle, but a stiff patrician like the junior Senator from Massachusetts,
who's uncomfortable drinking a beer from a bottle at a local bullroast,
probably won't seize the opportunity. Of the candidates in play right
now-Wisconsin's Russell Feingold, who apparently isn't running, is the
Democrats' best chance against President Bush-my greenbacks are on Dick
Gephardt, the underestimated former minority leader who's never been under
Clinton's spell.

Clinton is a national embarrassment, a bored and bitter politician whose
weekly routine is a mixture of lucrative (and usually incoherent) speeches
around the world, socializing with celebrities and criticizing Bush with an
unprecedented zeal, demolishing the tradition of an ex-president keeping
mum, at least for several years, about his successor. Even Jimmy Carter, who
disgracefully accepted a Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to him only as a
rebuke to Bush, looks graceful in comparison.

The Arkansan's latest tirade was lapped up by CNN on Dec. 19, as he
inserted (no pun intended) himself into the Lott fiasco. Clinton said: "How
do they [the Republican Party] think they got a majority in the South
anyway? I think what they are really upset about is that [Lott] made public
their strategy.

"They try to suppress black voting, they ran on the Confederate flag in
Georgia and South Carolina, and from top to bottom the Republicans supported
it." When a CNN reporter asked the man who pardoned Marc Rich if Lott should
walk the plank, he responded: "That's up to them, but I think they can't do
it with a straight face...

Bubba

"He just embarrassed them by saying in Washington what they do on the
back roads every day."

Clinton, still reeling from his ineffective campaigning on behalf of
Democratic candidates in November, has willfully distorted the facts. In
Georgia, for example, the issue of the Confederate flag was minor. The
defeat of incumbent Democrat Roy Barnes by Sonny Perdue, was one of the
biggest shocks of the midterm elections; had Perdue's promise of a
referendum on the flag resonated so highly, it would've shown up in polls,
which showed Barnes winning by a landslide.

As Mark Levin, among others, pointed out in a Dec. 20 National Review
Online post, Clinton's record on race isn't pristine. For example, in 1985,
as governor, the First Black President signed a law making "the birthdates
of Martin Luther King Jr... [and Confederate general] Robert E. Lee... state
holidays on the same day." In addition, while Clinton was governor, Arkansas
law decreed that "The Saturday immediately preceding Easter Sunday of each
year is designated as 'Confederate Flag Day' in this state." Levin notes:
"Clinton took no steps during his twelve years as governor to repeal this
law. And we know why, don't we? He didn't want to offend certain of his
constituents."

...AND HIS PRETTY WIFE, TOO

Hillary Clinton echoed her husband's words just a few days later, telling
Fox News, "I mean, what [Lott] did was state publicly what many of them have
stated privately over many years in the back roads and back streets of the
South." She then bashed Bush for his South Carolina primary campaign against
John McCain in 2000-an ugly contest on both sides-in which leaflets were
distributed highlighting McCain's adoption of a black baby, a smear tactic
the Bush camp disavowed. The dirty tricks of losing candidates are quickly
forgotten, but it's worth recalling that McCain wasn't pure in his
media-driven bid to defeat Bush. In the Michigan primary, for example, his
supporters called voters, saying that the Texas governor was anti-Catholic.
In addition, McCain, speaking on the Straight Talk Express, referred to the
"gooks" in Vietnam. The Senator's captivity during the war inoculated him
from the slur, but had the media not been so besotted by McCain, it would've
been more than a one-day story and Asian-Americans would've been justifiably
outraged.

Sen. Clinton, like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, has now publicly
announced that Democrats will race-bait every Republican they possibly can
in the coming two years. It's a losing strategy, but expect Frist to be the
first castigated for imagined racial sins.

On Saturday, the Daily News' Zev Chafets wrote a withering critique of
Bill Clinton. He said: "Clinton speaks with a certain authority. He is the
Man from Hope, former governor of Arkansas, a son of the South.

"On the other hand, he now lives in Chappaqua, Westchester County,
where, according to the 2000 census, the African-American population is
.03%...

"Clinton's adopted town is not unique. The ex-President may not know
this, but the anti-segregationist North-even here in New York-is dotted with
lily-white towns, schools and neighborhoods.

"And clearly, not all the lilies are Republicans...

"The Democrats, meanwhile, have integrated in the Northern way-blacks
can join the party if they stay in their own precincts. Representatives,
yes; senators, no. Black governors? Find one and ask. Try Carl McCall...

"Don't misunderstand me. I'm not making excuses for [Lott]. I hope they
ride him out of Washington on a rail...

"In fact, I hate Jim Crow just as much as the next white man who just
happens to live in a virtually all-white neighborhood. Bill Clinton and I
are on the same page there. And the same block."